As a real estate business, you have stock that you cycle through constantly. New listings come in and get sold, or end up sitting on your books for a period of time.

To create sales in the current market environment, you need to maintain control over your stock levels. That means knowing what you have, what is saleable and what is not.

You’re going to need systems to create that control…

In this article, I’ll explain the key principles behind a system we take our clients through called the ‘Stock Setup’™ whiteboard system.

But before getting to those, let’s take a closer look at some of the problems you’re facing right now inside your business if sales are slow..

The Problems

There are three problems that you have to confront when it comes to slow sales.

The first is that you’re constantly stuck in yesterday’s market.

When this happens, you end up blaming vendors for the poor results in your business. For example, you might get a good offer from a buyer that you think the vendor should take. But if they don’t follow your advice, you end up blaming them for a problem that actually comes from your lack of a system.

The second problem is that you’re too buyer-focused.

This means that you’re placing all of your energy into the buyers. This results in frustration when the buyer won’t come up to the price that the vendor wants. You end up wasting a lot of time because you’ve placed your focus in the wrong place. 

And finally, we have the list and last mentality.

When you have this mentality, you allow a lot of negative energy to flow through your business. And that happens because you’re relying on marketplace conditions to control your destiny.

One of our most successful clients of 2019 ‘Gail Richards from Key to Sale in South Australia, discovered that she had this mentality when she first joined us. Her business was all about getting as much stock as she could and then just seeing what happened.

After adopting our ‘Stock Setup’™ whiteboard system, she’s experienced amazing growth in her business. She’s gone from doing 5-8 sales per month to 20-25. Same market, same number of listings, just she started making 15 or so more sales per month.

Now that you can see the problems, it’s time to start solving them. These are the five key principles of the ‘Stock Setup’™ whiteboard system.

Principle #1 – Take a Structured Look at Your Stock

When talking about this point, I always think back to one of my first sales in real estate, many years ago.

We listed the property for sale at $345,000. I had a verbal offer of $335,000 in week 2 of the campaign, which I delivered to the vendors. While driving to the house, I believed that the vendors should take that offer. Even though it was $10,000 below the asking price, it was still slightly above market.

I didn’t get the response I wanted.

They told me there was no way they’d take that offer. They’d just gone on the market and they wanted more from the buyer.

I got back in my car feeling so frustrated. I must have called that vendor every name under the sun on the drive back to the office.

That property eventually sold about 10 weeks later for $325,000, which was $10,000 less than that early offer.

Looking back on it, I can see that the lack of structure I had in regards to my stock is what cost that vendor money. And I’m guessing that you’ve had a situation like this where the vendor said no to a good offer early and ended up losing out?

Taking a structured look at your stock helps you to mitigate this issue.

Principle #2 – Regulate Your Sales Flow

If you regulate your sales flow, everything becomes nice and you can sleep well at night.

There are three key functions that you need to have continually following here:

1. Inspections
2. Feedback
3. Price alignments

If you get these three things flowing well, you know that everything has a cycle. And that means you’re not relying on market conditions when it comes to working with your stock.

Principle #3 – Deliver Facts, Not Opinions

Without wanting to get too political, I tend to look at Donald Trump when I think about this principle.

This is a guy who tends to deliver more opinions than facts. He’s quick to tell you what he thinks about a situation and he’ll inject emotion into it straight away.

You can’t do that inside your real estate business.

You must get really comfortable with the idea of delivering facts in your business. Asking second and third questions to every buyer who inspects is a critical skill to master in a changing market landscape. 

It’s all about understanding what the market is telling you and working from there.

Principle #4 – Drive Predictability

You can start to drive predictability inside your business, when you have a structure in your stock and a sales flow.

When you drive predictability, you’re not relying on the market to determine the fate of your business. Instead, you know where you’re going to be from one month to the next which I see time and time again with clients, when you get the ‘Stock Setup’™ whiteboard system flowing effectively.

Principle #5 – Control What’s Going On in Your Four Walls

Your business becomes so exciting because you have no reliance on anything outside of your own four walls.

The simple fact is that all of the outside factors that you worry about shouldn’t affect your business. There’s always stock on the market that isn’t getting sold. And usually, that’s happening because the agent doesn’t have control of what’s going on in their four walls.

The point here is that you control what you’re able to control. When you do that, the stuff that’s outside of your control doesn’t have as much of an effect on you.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the ‘Stock Setup’™ whiteboard system  allows you to take control of the flow of stock in your business.

You build predictable processes and structures that you can follow, regardless of what happens with the market. You also regulate your sales flow, which again means having more control.

And finally, you ensure you’re always dealing with facts, instead of opinions.

With this system in place, you can stop blaming your vendors for not doing the things that you want them to do. Instead, you have control over your stock and your outcomes, which creates predictability in your real estate business.

Jess Densley
Process & Structure Coach
For Real Estate Professionals

PLUS… Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways I can help you grow your real estate business in 2020:

1. Grab a copy of our new 2020 ebook – ‘Sales Activation™’
   Get a simple plan to take control of your business in 2020. Download it here. 
2. Join the ‘Agent Hub’ group and connect with real estate people who are scaling too
   It’s our amazing Facebook community where 2000 other smart real estate people hang out and share ideas. – Click Here. 
3. Join our next upcoming 6 week course’ Crisis Proofing Your Real Estate Business in 2020′
   Get the plan to lead, survive and thrive through COVID19. Just reply back with ‘6 weeks’ and I’ll get you all the details to take control of your business right now.
4. Join me this week for our online master class on ‘Crisis proofing your real estate business in 2020’
   Learn the key steps to take control of your business this year. We have limited places join here